ISLAM AND CONVERTED MUSLIMS

A group of Saudi women activists have launched a nationwide campaign to enact a law criminalizing child marriages in Saudi Arabia.


JEDDAH — Shocked by stories of young girls being married off to men at the age of their fathers, a group of Saudi women activists have launched a nationwide campaign to enact a law criminalizing child marriages in the conservative kingdom.
"The idea of the campaign came out after child marriages have become rife in Saudi Arabia," Fawziya Al-Oyouni, president of the Saudi society for defending women's rights, told IslamOnline.net on Friday, September 19.

The activists are planning to file a petition with the Saudi Justice Ministry on September 23, to demand a law criminalizing the marriage of girls under 17.

"The petition will demand setting the marriage age for girls at 17," the society said in a statement.

Oyouni said child marriages often end up in tragedies.

She cited the case of a 16-year-old who has tried to commit suicide after she had been married off to a man in his 70s.

"A 10-year-old child also became a divorcee," said Oyouni.

The issue of child marriages has sparked a headed debate in Saudi Arabia after local papers reported cases of young girls who had been married off to men as old as their fathers.

Last month, the mother of an eight-year-old girl filed a suit to divorce her daughter, who was married to an old man by her father without the child's knowledge.

In many child marriages, girls are given away to older men in return for hefty dowries or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his daughters and sons to marriage while children.

According to local statistics, in the most of these cases, the marriage is concluded without the girls knowledge or consent.

Awareness
Saudi scholars don't see a problem with enacting a law fixing the marriage age for girls.

"There is no Shari`ah ruling against specifying the marriage age for girls," said Dr. Saud Al-Fenesyan, a former rector of the Shari`ah Faculty in the Imam Muhammed bin Saud University.

"Setting the age of 17 or 18 for the marriage of girls is permissible according to the Hanafi school of thought, which is applicable in many man-made laws."

There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage.

Though the girl must give her consent to the marriage, some marriage officials set the term aside.

A United Nations report on child marriage in 2005 found that 100 million girls were expected to marry by the age of 18 before 2015.

The worst countries for child marriage were Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh.

Zuhair Al Harthi, a spokesman for the Saudi human rights authority, believes that laws would not end the phenomenon.

"This issue first requires raising awareness of the parents," he told IOL.

Source: IslamOnline http://www.islamonline.com/